Title

Author

Degree

Master of Arts

Program

Theory and Criticism

Supervisor

Dr. Sharon Sliwinski

Abstract

Abstract: Our aim with this project is to re-animate shame, to argue that there are in fact two kinds of shame experience. The first, primary shame, refers to the exposure of the self by the primordial other, a moment prior to the interpolation of judgment and morality in which the self apprehends its object state before the other, fixed within its gaze. Primary shame is the revelation thatI am insofar as the other sees me. Secondary shame, on the other hand, is the mobilization within the pale of society of this originary exhibition of self. Secondary shame is a social tool for the moralization, regulation, and standardization of citizens; it is an invidious derivative of the primary pronouncement of the affect. We have endeavored to give a phenomenological account of shame that frees it from the ideology of a strictly moral and moralizing teleology, one that opens shame to questions concerning animality, community, and ontology. Can non-human animals experience primary shame? Can we speak meaningfully about communities of shame? Is shame an irrevocable and constitutive aspect of all being-in-the-world? These are the essential concerns of this project. But perhaps, more basically, this project is an attempt to reflect upon, to re-cast and re-invigorate the significance of the role played by others upon the being of the self, to expose a veiled truth: that the being of each resonates with the being of all.

Recommended Citation

Glover, Noel A., "Shame and the Sharing of Existence" (2012). University of Western Ontario - Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Paper 875.http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/875